Films disposed on a substrate are often deposited at high temperatures. Thus, finished substrates at elevated temperatures are sensitive to oxygen exposure when they are removed from a process chamber. Therefore, finished substrates are typically cooled to at or near room temperature to minimize substrate sensitivity to oxygen exposure.
Currently, in some substrate processing systems, passive cooling methods are used to simultaneously cool a plurality of processed substrates. However, the passive cooling method takes about 5-10 minutes to reduce the temperature of the substrates below 30° C. (e.g., about room temperature). Thus, the throughput of the processing system is significantly reduced. Alternatively, in some processing systems active cooling apparatus is used to cool processed substrates. However, such apparatus only cool one substrate at a time, which also reduces throughput of the processing system. Furthermore, the active cooling apparatus are still not capable of quickly cooling a processed substrate to at or near room temperature.
Therefore, the inventors have provided an improved multi-substrate thermal management apparatus for use with integrated fabrication systems.